Abandonment
by Artemisdesari
Summary: Tag to 5.22 Swan Song. Dean thinks on his new life and the people that he has lost, the people that he wants back. Dean/Lisa, Dean/Cas preslash.


_It's late, I know it is, but in fairness I was at a convention getting hugged by Mark and Jim so my head wasn't in _any_ condition to write _anything_ at that point. I would like to say that it was one of the best weekends I have had in a long time, that Mark is _far_ too into his role as Lucifer and that he was utterly hysterical in all the important ways._

_Onto the episode tag: blatent spoilers here there lies. I'd like to add that I don't hate Lisa and that I loved her and Dean together. But Dean/Cas holds my heart and always will._

_**Disclaimer:** Ok, Cas is in heaven, Sammy is locked in the pit and Nick!Lucifer is gone. This has at no point been my plan for the show, which means that I don't own it. Added to which does anyone really think that I would have exploded my angel like that? Anyone at all? My point exactly.  
_

Abandonment.

Dean Winchester would never be the first to admit that he has abandonment issues. That he is a royally messed up and disturbed individual has never been in question, the job _has_ to have had some affect on him and _Hell_ certainly will not have helped matters, but he will never give voice or credence to the idea that he has trouble dealing with abandonment.

After all, he _is_ Dean Winchester.

The thing of it all is, all his life he has lost people that are closest to him. All his life those that are most important have left or driven him away. Sometimes he gets them back, more often these days they stay gone. His mother, Sam, his father, Bobby, even the _car_, and when he did get any one of them back they were torn away from him with sometimes startling rapidity. So Castiel abandoning him so soon after Dean had gotten him back, so soon after the hunter had lost not just one but _both_ of his brothers, cuts and tears and _hurts_ far more than he thinks it should.

He hopes that going to Lisa and Ben will help ease some of the pain.

It takes him eight months to realise how wrong he is. Eight months of living a normal life and trying to be a good father to Ben. Eight months of running to the store to get the little bits and pieces Lisa may need, eight months of working in a garage part time while he finds his feet. Eight months where he has nothing to distract him from the agony of all that he has lost and all that he desires.

He has Lisa, he suspects that he has all that she can give him that does not already belong to her son, and on some level he thinks that he might love her, but it is not enough somehow. He longs for that time on the road, the time where he had nothing but the miles underneath the Impala's wheels to distract him and the soothing company of Sam, or the aggravation of Castiel wrapped in a sense of safety that nothing has been able to recreate in this new life. It all seems to come back to the angel, or what ever he is now, all seems to fall back on the fact that when Castiel first came into his life and pulled him from the pit Dean first got the sensation that he was worth more that just the hunt, worth more than the big brother role that his father had thrust upon him.

Dean can overlook Castiel's original betrayal because the angel knew no better, the angel had only ever followed orders and he turned his back on everything he had ever known for the hunter. Somehow he knows that he had always suspected that Castiel's continued presence was too much to hope for, too much to ask for.

It never occurs to him that if he had simply _asked_ Castiel might have stayed with him until Dean had thought about what he really wanted. Right now he is almost certain that this apple pie life is not it.

For one thing he is bored, the initial contentment of knowing that he had somewhere to sleep and a means to earn a solid living, people who love him and somewhere safe to mourn all that he has lost, is wearing thin. He has itchy feet and can feel the road calling to him, he drives late into the night sometimes and yet always returns to her house when Lisa calls him back, tries to put from his mind the brief sense of freedom that it allows him to feel. He does not want to hurt the woman who has taken him into her life and her home except that sometimes he will look out of a window late at night and think that he sees Sam, will feel the deep gnawing of guilt and the agony of betrayal in his gut and wonder how he has left either of his brothers in the pit for so long.

It takes him six months to realise that he needs to pick up the stick and poke at the cage, another month to realise that if he walks out of the door this time there will be no going back and he has to be certain that this is what he wants. He has to be sure that he wants to spend the rest of his life trying to get Sam back and he knows that he will need help.

Castiel turns up nearly a week later, looking no different from the day he left but for the slightly harried look in his too blue eyes. Lisa is wary of him, her dislike almost instantaneous and it is almost as though she knows that the angel is going to take the hunter away from this normality. At first it reinforces for Dean how hard he has fought to have this normalcy and Castiel does not question his denial, though he flinches when Dean puts an arm about Lisa's waist, eyes flat and possessive and filled with something that the hunter does not want to put a name to because it sparks something in him that he knows is dangerous.

The angel, archangel now apparently, does not stop visiting. Usually he will avoid Lisa and Ben if he can help it, will drink a beer with Dean and they will talk about inane things, avoid the subject of Sam wherever possible because it apparently causes them both pain. Dean never did stop to think that Cas may have lost a friend when Sam jumped into the pit. Eventually they will lapse into silence, one that is often uncomfortable but familiar, the trade of emotion through their eyes alone and the silent confirmation of something that neither one will ever admit to but that is there for the world to see if they will only take a momentary glance.

Lisa notices and Dean thinks himself a fool for assuming that she would not.

In the end it is Castiel who confirms that the glimpses of Sam are not Dean's imagination, Cas who tells the hunter that for this series of visitations there must be a problem with the cage. The angel who confirms that Dean's continued presence here will cause Lisa and Ben danger, possibly even that they will lose their lives. It is the thing that decides it for Dean, that no one else should die because of him, that he has to get Sam out of that box.

Castiel does not object, the newly made archangel offers to help him, and though Lisa sheds a great many tears at their parting, curses Castiel and begs Dean to reconsider, he feels only regret at the fact that he has to hurt her, that he is causing this pain because he has been selfish in thinking that he deserves a normal life. His comfort is that Castiel does not show anger at Lisa's words, that the angel's face is compassionate and that he stays at the hunter's side until they are out of town.

It is not going to be easy to get Sam back, Dean knows this, but he will have Castiel at his side every step of the way and that lightens his soul and fills his heart with a joy and an emotion that he will not name. If he sometimes sees the same emotion reflected in the angel's eyes neither ever mentions it.

They have a job to do.

_Artemis_


End file.
